


Perchance to dream

by thepurplewombat



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: EMP fic, I blame LSiT for this, I'm Sorry, M/M, also TAB and parts of HLV, everything that happens in s4 is in Sherlock's Mind Palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:43:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9264311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: Sherlock has been in a coma since he was shot. John sits with him.





	

The room is dark. It’s always dark, because if Sherlock – when Sherlock opens his eyes, well. It’s been a while. It’s going to hurt.

“You’ll like this one,” John says, rustling the file as he takes his seat. One of Mycroft’s Faceless Minions had replaced the hard hospital chair with a more comfortable one, and now as he sits down it’s almost like he’s in Baker Street, with Sherlock in a sulk and not talking, and John reading the paper aloud because he knows Sherlock is listening. “Apparently this woman’s husband was in two places at once, and got killed. Lestrade was baffled, it was…well, it was actually pretty funny. Only it turns out that her husband was never dead at all, so…well, it’s all a bit muddled.”

John is about to start reading the case notes when Sherlock’s phone moans, and John’s head turns so fast he thinks he may sprain something.

“Well,” he says. “The Woman is still texting you, I see.”

He picks up the phone and looks at the text, and then stares at the still figure in the hospital bed, at the beeping machines and the ever-present IVs.

“I guess I should say happy birthday, shouldn’t I? Would you like me to reply to her for you? Maybe I should tell her to piss off, because you don’t want anything to do with her. Would you like that?”

Sherlock is silent, as he’s been silent for the past….ninety days, eleven hours, and fifty-six minutes. He doesn’t move, barely breathes.

“I never knew your birthday,” John says quietly. “She wants to have dinner. You should wake up, you know. Have dinner with The Woman for your birthday. I bet Mrs Hudson would probably bake a cake.”

And then suddenly it’s too much, and John is leaning over Sherlock with his hands on the thin shoulders of the man he…of his best friend, and he shouts in the pale cold face, half-hidden by the machine that’s helping him breathe.

“You made a vow!” he shouts, shaking Sherlock. “You said you’d always be there! Well fuck you and your vows, Sherlock Holmes. You never made a single one you kept anyway.”

It’s as though his knees go out under him, and he finds himself back in the chair, with his head buried in his arms on the side of Sherlock’s bed, crying.

“I asked you not to be dead once, and you heard me. Hear me again, Sherlock, please,” he says. “If you won’t wake up for me, do it for her. Do it for The Woman, for Irene. I don’t care why you wake up or how, I just need you to wake up.”

After a while, John falls asleep in Sherlock’s silence, with the beeping of the machines ringing in his ears. He dreams, over and over, of Mary shooting Sherlock, of Mary vanishing into the night, never to be seen again. He dreams, and beside him Sherlock breathes in and out, as slow and even as a metronome, soothing John’s nightmares away.

In the morning, a nurse comes in and changes the IV. Sherlock continues to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I am not sure whether I believe in EMP theory, but I read something that woke this story and...well, here it is.


End file.
